The National Sports Collectors Convention (https://nsccshow.com) is an annual summer gathering of collectors/dealers who have a passion for trading cards, autographs, and any other kind of memorabilia that you can think of. First formed in 1980, it is now the premier collectibles industry event that attracts a majority of the licensing agencies from around the professional sports world. The 42nd “National” will be held during the final week of July at the Atlantic City Convention Center, and next summer it will head back to the Midwest in Chicago. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel is unable to attend this year’s event in person so instead he will be interviewing as many of the dealers who will be there as possible. We conclude our coverage with Phil Regli and his magnificent college basketball merchandise.
1. 1905 Yale-Dartmouth Basketball Promotional Flyer: Yale finished 2nd in the 5-team Ivy League that year with a 5-3 conference record (Note: we will not be discussing where Penn finished!), Dartmouth was an Independent at the time and finished with an overall record of 20-10-1 (they finally joined the Ivy League several years later in 1911), Phil acquired this flyer as part of a collection of vintage material, it is rare because you do not see a lot of people who have saved such flyers (Phil has only seen about 3 of them in his lifetime), this was during the beginning years of basketball when it was mostly played on the East Coast using peach baskets, this item is priced around $95
2. 1938 Hank Luisetti Stanford Basketball Team 8×10 press photo: Hank is considered to be 1 of the greatest basketball innovators ever after developing the running 1-handed shot, he became the 1st player to ever score 50 PTS in a game (against Duquesne on January 1, 1938) and was named the 2nd-best player of the mid-century (behind George Mikan) by an AP poll of sportswriters/broadcasters in 1950, he was a 2-time national POY in 1937/1938 so if you are a basketball connoisseur this is kind of cool, the photo of Hank is a famous shot that is used a lot and he was a special player for his era, this item is priced around $50
3. 1947 Collier’s magazine cover of Ralph Beard: this is the era when basketball began to capture the national attention so it is hard to find a lot of college basketball items from pre-1950, prior to this time you would not find any team on a magazine cover so Kentucky was considered the “national” team (even NBA teams did not command national attention at this time), Beard was a member of Adolph Rupp’s “Fabulous 5” team along with Alex Groza/Wallace Jones/Cliff Barker/Kenny Rollins, he was a 3-time consensus 1st-team All-American and won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics, a lot of people collect Kentucky memorabilia and Beard was the star of that team, this item is priced around $30
4. 1961 Basketball Yearbook Jerry Lucas: basketball-only magazines started appearing after WWII and became a full-blown phenomenon by the 1960’s, Lucas was part of the legendary 1958 Ohio State recruiting class that included 2 other future Hall of Famers (John Havlicek/Bob Knight) and another future NBA player (Mel Nowell), they won the 1960 NCAA title game over defending champion California in San Francisco and Lucas was named 1960 tourney MOP, in 1961 the Buckeyes won 32 straight games including an Elite 8 win over Kentucky where Lucas became the only college player to ever record a 30/30 game in tourney history (33 PTS/30 REB), that year he became the 1st basketball player to ever be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, he was a 3-time 1st-team All-American and is widely considered the greatest player in Big 10 history, this item is priced around $20
5. Babe Didrikson Zaharias 1930 National All-American bracelet: Babe is widely regarded as 1 of the greatest athletes of all time and picked up this bracelet at age 19 when her Dallas Cyclones basketball team went to the AAU Nationals and won it all, her 1st job after high school was as secretary for the Employers’ Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas…although she was employed only to play basketball on the company’s “industrial team”, this is a rare item not just because it is almost 100 years old but because it is the very 1st award won by a woman on the national level, this item is priced around $20,000(!)
If you want more information about Phil’s items then feel free to check out his website (www.cardsprograms.com) or email him at: regli@aol.com